


Fear Finds a Foothold

by gracimay11



Category: Knights of the Pantheon
Genre: Demon, Good ol hellboys, M/M, Mutual Pining, Satan - Freeform, Satyr, Self-Hatred, Tieflings, mindscape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:49:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27890062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracimay11/pseuds/gracimay11
Summary: Fel is bored and can't sleep. Deciding to bide his time in the mindscape he pays Aradell and Cyrus a visit.After an argument with Aradell and a series of bad decisions, the mindscape is plunged into darkness and Fel is nowhere to be found. Can the boys find solace in each other in the face of their greatest fears or will fear find a foothold?
Relationships: Aradell Bellmont/Cyrus/Fel Winter, Cyrus/Aradell, Fel Winter/Aradell Bellmont, Fel Winter/Cyrus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Fear Finds a Foothold

Fel wakes with a start. Terror still coursing through his body like an electrical current. He pulls his shaking hands free from the constraints of his sleeping bag and frantically pats down his body, his neck, his chest, his arms, his legs, his right leg, still there. It’s still grotesquely deformed but it’s still there. He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or not. That leg is pretty screwed maybe he would be better off without that one. Still, his breathing slows and he leans back against Kylie’s cool underbelly, awake for the night. He can’t go back. Not tonight.

Growing up in Quillan Fel isn’t unaccustomed to nightmares. He got used to living with monsters from a pretty young age. He learned pretty early on that people weren’t something to be afraid of. People were stupid and flawed and way too easy to manipulate. Fel could never be afraid of something so weak. But outside of Quillan there are no petty criminals, the monsters out here are real. In the rest of Revelation there are beasts and demons and gods waging war against the people and well, Fel isn’t scared. He’s just annoyed. Demons are annoying. He’s especially annoyed that Aradell brought one of them into his head. 

Ever since then, sleep hasn’t come too easily, or at all really. It used to be that Fel could just lie in bed, let his mind go blank and then he was gone, but sleeping isn’t so simple anymore. He lays down, closes his eyes, feels his body go to sleep, feels the press of a blanket disappear from his cheek, the hard pressure of the ground beneath his back dissolve into numbness but there's never nothingness. Fel’s mind stays awake. He lies paralyzed in his sleeping bag for hours until morning, stuck in the darkness, alone. Not afraid. Fel doesn’t get scared he just gets bored and that shit is boring. Still, he likes the darkness better than the nightmares. 

Most nights they aren’t a big deal. it’s just snippets of Aradells memories or cryptic nonsense before he gets a task from Cyrus but then there’s the bad nights. Fel still can’t pinpoint where he goes in those nightmares. His best guess is that it’s Haldanna’s domain, the chaos planes. Where the darkness swallows him whole until the winds pick up around him.They feel so vivid. His clothes pull against his body so vigorously his skin is rubbed raw, the wind presses so hard against his face it burns and his eyes feel like they’re bleeding. The sound is the worst though. The wind rushes around him so fast it sounds less like wind and more like some creature screaming in the distance. The sound is so loud it fills the emptiness around him, it presses into his ears and inflicts a pain so sharp he wishes he were deaf. Debris flies around in the emptiness so fast he almost can’t see it. Objects bang around crashing into each other, flying everywhere. He’s one of them. They hit him everywhere. When he’s lucky it only takes one good blow to the head to wake him up. When he’s not, slabs of wood lodge themselves through his abdomen, his eyes, his legs. He screams and it joins the roar of the wind and makes everything so much worse. Each impact sends him tumbling backwards end over end until he crashes into something else. His blood joins the cyclone around him until there’s none left. He feels his body ache in excruciating pain until it has nothing left to give.  
He wakes up. Tonight he lost his leg. He wasn’t scared though. It just hurt but it’s over now. He’s awake and he’s fine besides the gurgle. Everything’s fine. 

He must not have been asleep for very long. It’s pitch black but he can barely make out the silhouettes of the sleeping figures around him by the light of Maddie’s drowsy flames. They’re all lazy assholes. He wonders briefly why he even agreed all of this bullshit but can’t find any good reasons. He guesses he must just like them a little bit. It’s also probably his destiny or something but he doesn’t believe in bullshit. All he knows is he’s here and he’s not fucking sleeping. 

He grabs his satchel and starts rifling through it. He knows he had booze in there somewhere but he comes up dry. Where the fuck did he put it? He gets up and gently prods his way through Kylies satchels, trying not to wake her. There’s nothing but rations in those. He's almost positive he had something though. He stands up and considers traipsing through the minefield of sleeping bodies to get to the cart when he notices the light reflecting off of something in Skrugs hand that looks like it could be a bottle. He moves closer, carefully adjusting his feet around Saiphy’s sleeping bag so as not to accidentally assault the child while she’s sleeping. His party lets him get away with a lot of fucked up shit but he knows they would not let that one slide. Murder as many civilians as you want but just don’t fuck with Saiphy. Well I mean, they get mad about the civilians too but they get over it. 

He gets one leg over Saiphy’s bundle of limbs and he’s just close enough to Skrug that he can reach forward and pluck the object from his grasp. He accidentally pulls one of Skrugs hands out with it but it plops back onto the ground in front of his sleeping bag with a dull thud. Fel thinks he woke him up for just a second before he hears Skrug mutter what sounds a lot like “Halflings are so fertile,” followed by some gibberish as he clutches his hand to his chest once again and rolls over. Kinky fucker. Kinky fucking thief is what he is Fel curses to himself as he inspects the bottle and finds that it was indeed his ale but the cork is gone and the bottle is bone fucking dry. He mutters some more increasingly explicit words to himself as he steps gently back over Saiphy’s fucking arms, Goddammit they’re everywhere what is she even fucking doing? And retreats back to his own sleeping bag once again.

He checks the bottle one more time for good measure and once he’s positive it's empty he figures Skrug can have it back. He tosses it over Saiphy’s mess of limbs, careful not to overshoot and hit Alouise. His aim is perfect and he watches as it thumps dully against Skrug’s chest and tumbles to his side. Fel’s not gonna lie he’s a little disappointed it didn’t break but relieved it didn’t wake anybody up because he does not want to deal with anyones bullshit right now. Skrug must be out cold because this time he doesn’t even move when Fel assaults him. Worthless goddamn elf, he’s gonna pay for that in the morning.

Fel slumps down against Kylie once again boozeless and bored. He thinks about Trexa and considers going to the astral plane to see her but he knows it’s a lost cause. She disappeared weeks ago. Fel still doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know what he did wrong this time. Normally he can pinpoint exactly what idiotic mistake he made. Like having sex with some slut from Star Bay for discount goods while she watched. That was a bad one. Or the time he popped in just to let her watch him die, she wasn’t very into that either. This time though there was nothing. The last time he spoke to her was completely normal and then she just never came back. He wonders for a second if maybe he said something rude by accident and pissed her off. It’s plausible. He’s a dick to a lot of people but never usually Trexa. He’s nice to Trexa. Or at least, he tries to be. He toys with the idea of checking for a few more minutes but ultimately decides against it. 

Trexa is one of the few people he doesn’t hate. She’s just good. The kind of good without ulterior motives. The kind of good that comes without trying. Almost like it just lives in her and seeps out with every small gesture. The kind of good Fel wishes he could be. The kind of good Trexa thinks he can become. He misses her, a lot, but without her there in the astral plane it swarms with monsters. She usually holds back the tides of demons and devils that lurk in the mist. Fel never really questions it. He has no idea how or why she protects him like he does. He tries his best to prove to her that he isn’t worth it but she’s committed to him like no one else has been. No matter what atrocities he commits he’s always forgiven. She always comes back. He guesses her being absent right now is the one exception. It’s not like he needs her or anything. He’s entirely capable of holding off the monsters without her help but fuck that shit. He’s not scared of them or anything. After the nightmares he’s just way too tired to deal with all that right now. 

Resigned, he slumps against Kylie, and starts to toy with his cantrips. He casts thaumaturgy a few times in Maddies direction, curious if it’ll actually have any effect on a pyre. To his surprise it does. He spends a few minutes sitting there in the dark, wearily watching the tips of Maddies flames dance in the blackness. He casts the spell a few more times running the flames through every color of the rainbow until he stops on purple. He watches the flames flicker in monochromatic shades of violet until they slowly slip into reds and back to Maddie’s natural orange as the spell wears off. He wonders what Aradell is doing right now. 

👻 👻 👻

Aradell peers up at the layers of gray stone piled miles high that extends far above him into the misty atmosphere of his mindscape. Seeing it from the bottom after hours of work is satisfying, if a bit disappointing. On the one hand it is very tall. The goal was to make a tall building and see how high he could go and he kind of succeeded. There’s no way he could measure it or anything but he can observe it and his observations tell him that it is very huge. On the other hand the building, (if you can even call it that) is kind of a failure in several other vital areas. For one it didn’t even serve it’s exploratory purposes. He wanted to see how high he could construct something in the mindscape before he breached a wall, or well, a ceiling he supposes, but this endeavor turned out just like all of his other attempts to push the boundaries of this place. It just isn't possible. No boundaries exist really. He spent hours conjuring walls and stairs going up and up and up not until he breached a ceiling but until he just couldn’t stomach taking another step. Not because he was tired, he doesn’t really have the ability to get tired inside of what is essentially his soul, but you can only climb endlessly for so long until exploratory construction becomes nothing but the repetitive action of wall, wall, wall, stairs, rinse, repeat. After hours of the same tedious ascension he began to feel more inclined to construct a pole at the bottom of the tower to plummet to and impale himself on than to climb another step. 

Yet another disappointing factor of his construction was it’s appearance. To call it disappointing is a bit of an understatement. It’s kind of an abomination. He chose a simple brick and stone design for the walls so as not to consume too much effort as he erected his creation. The goal was upward growth not presentation and feng shui, though he never intended for it to look this bad. His material choices, as boring as they were, aren't really what’s wrong with the structure. As Aradell gazes up at his tower’s awkward angles, jutting corners, and holes where the misaligned walls failed to connect properly due to their disparity of sizes he is overcome by discontent. He begins to think that maybe he should have formulated a better technique. It never really occurred to him that constructing a building from the inside out with no prior planning was a bad idea. Only now that he has the displeasure of looking at it does he realize that this all may have been very stupid. Not only does it look bad. He’s almost certain that if this unfortunate obelisk existed outside of the mindscape that it’s developmental failures would cause it to collapse onto itself the instant it came into existence. All that being said, he almost doesn’t hate it. 

Aradell sighs as he steps back for a wider view and considers erasing his tower from existence. Cyrus clears his throat behind him where he sits in a lounge chair wearing nothing but shades, his usual gaudy golden jewelry, and a sheer black kimono. He sips obnoxiously from a martini glass before getting to the point and addressing the shameful display before him. “You’ve made some serious improvement since your attempt at making a castle however, this is still pretty much a pile of shit.”

“You know Cyrus, as much as I love our little talks, now is not the greatest time. I’m kind of in the middle of something and you being a little devil is breaking my focus”

“Shame, it was your spirit I was trying to break.” Aradell turns around to give a pointed glare. “Look, i see what you’re doing, i just don’t really think you’re getting anywhere and i don’t know why you keep bothering. Honestly, I couldn't care less how you spend your time here but watching you do this over and over again is exhausting, not to mention these” Cyrus plucks his shades from his face and grimaces at the structure looming in the background. “Things you’re making are more than a little horrendous and they’re everywhere Aradell i can’t escape seeing them”

“Then perhaps plucking your eyes out is the solution. I’m bothering because the mind is an indescribable void filled with knowledge and wisdom and if this place exists then others must exist too."

"There are so many flaws in that logic. The most egregious thus far is the assumption that your mind is filled with knowledge and wisdom"

"Cyrus, was there something you wanted? Anything other than to criticise my architecture and my intelligence?"

Cyrus makes the tough decision to hold off on another snarky comment about Aradell’s misuse of the word “architecture” whilst taking a sip of his martini. He shrugs and leans back in his lounge chair. “I get bored sometimes too.”

"Alright so is your new pastime to criticise me? Because trust me I'm fine doing that on my own"

Cyrus leans forward again with hand on his chest, “aw, are we getting self conscious?” he proceeds with a long dramatic sigh to convey his pity, “If you want love, i could turn around for now. Demolish these later?”

"First, I'm always self conscious second," he snaps his finger making the obelisk dissolve into mist, "don't call me love"

"Oh but why? It’s a genuine compliment, despite your lackluster attributes and personality, you do look quite lovely"

"Thanks I guess, as it turns out being dead has some benefits, like always looking your best. I wonder if that'll be the case if I go to hell?"

"oh good gods no, in the best circumstances you can at least count on a bad hair day. Trust me, i spent quite some time there"

"ok cool. I was worried about that because I'm sure when I die, like, permanently I'm going to hell, being Haldanas son and all."

"You shouldn't count on dying permanently. I wouldn't be so lucky"

"Wait, are you saying that i can't permanently die? What happens, do I get reincarnated or something? DO I BECOME A SNAIL?" Aradell’s eyes widen in excitement before it fades into contemplative disappointment. " Wait that wouldn't make sense nevermind"

Cyrus stares at him with a dumbfounded look on his face. He attempts to speak a few times but only manages a “wh-” or an “I-” before he’s once again struck speechless by Aradells complete lack of brain cells. Aradell blushes and lowers his head to rub at his temples. Yeah, he’s an idiot.

“I can still turn sound if you want.” Aradell looks up at him. He rolls his tired eyes and turns around to retreat into the woods before Cyrus can patronize him anymore. He’s too emotionally exhausted to handle stupidity anymore, Cyrus’ or his own. He takes his first couple of steps before he’s startled into turning around when he hears a shout echo through the forest. 

“Aradell, where do you piss!?” Fel makes his way to the treeline across the clearing, stomping through the underbrush and waging war with any tree branch that dares to get in his way. Cyrus is on the edge of his lounger looking in Fel’s direction. Fel’s yelling must’ve startled him too. Aradell thinks he might’ve killed somebody just then if it were physically possible for him to do that within his own mind. Instead he has to settle for a glare and an angry trudge back into the clearing. In hindsight, he should have just kept walking away. 

“I don't, I'm dead dumbass.”

“Oh yeah, huh,” Fel lowers his gaze to the ground and ponders his friend's death as though he didn’t notice before. 

“Sorry to jump in uninvited but I have to inform you I am very much alive” Cyrus states while making an unconvincingly ashamed looking face.

“You piss in my brain!?”

“Erm, no actually, this is Aradell’s mindscape”

“You piss here!?” Aradell turns around to look at Cyrus, who has conjured himself a trashy New Kartra gossip magazine.

“Like i was saying earlier there isn’t as much knowledge and wisdom here as there is piss,” He says unashamedly flipping a page of his magazine. 

Fel laughs obnoxiously and points at Aradell, “You have piss brain, dude,” he wheezes between his giggles. 

“Is there a reason why you’re here in my piss brain?” Aradell rubs his eyes. He really does manage to look tired despite being physically incapable of being tired. 

“To ask if I had piss brain obviously, but now that I know it’s just you I don’t really care anymore.”

“I’m going to go take a nap” Aradell turns to leave again and starts for the Northern part of the mindscape towards Den Crosswell. 

“You can’t” Cyrus jumps in disinterestedly from behind his book.

“He doesn’t know that, asshole.” Aradell flips them both off as he continues to walk in the opposite direction. 

“I do now.” Fel does a dorky little half jog to catch up with Aradell and move to match his stride when he catches up. Aradell looks over at him. 

“Why are you here?” 

Fel shrugs as he walks alongside him. “I was bored.”

“You were sleeping” 

“You know how that goes. You passed your fucked up brain onto me. Wait, does that mean I have piss brain by association? Motherfucker.” 

“Will you fucking shut up about the piss brain.”

“No”

Aradell swears his vision goes blurry. If he were any more pissed- god fucking dammit not pissed off. If he were any more angry Fel’s body would probably just eject him into the void. He stares blankly over at Fel beside him as his soul begins the journey into the beyond. Fel smirks.

“I wish I could die.”

Fel smiles, “me too. Hey, where are we going?”

Aradell sighs and points ahead, “Den Crosswell is that way, so if we hook a left just up there we’ll be at my house in like five minutes. You’ve been here before.”

Fel shrugs again, “I grew up in the city, turns out that makes you pretty shit at wandering through the woods.”

Aradell waves his hands about in a frantic and frustrated nature, “then why are you here!?” 

“Annoying you makes it worth it.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“You’re just figuring that out now?”

“No, i’m just figuring out that being alive wasn’t worth dealing with all this”

“Too late to do anything about it”

“You’d think.”

“Hey if you know of a way that we could purge you from my body i’d be all in” 

“Well too bad we don’t” 

“Like you’d know what to do without me anyway” 

“Oh i’d probably be happy for the first time in my life” 

Fel laughs, “yeah, probably”

They spend the rest of their walk in relative silence. Aradell left to wonder if Fel actually wants him purged from his head, why anybody would want him, and settling on the fact that Fel without a doubt wishes he were dead. Meanwhile Fel happily replays their conversation thus far in his head, content that he won’t have to spend the rest of the night alone, no matter how much he annoys Aradell. 

Eventually they make their way to Aradell’s quaint wooden garden cottage just outside of one of Den Crosswell’s unused entrances. Aradell leads the way through the rickety wooden fence protecting his harvest and surrounding his house with comfortable familiarity. 

His mindscape must’ve been constructed at a point when his garden actually managed to flourish, in between droughts, floods, parasites, and any other potential disaster you can imagine for a garden. In this memory his plants flourish. Squash vines bend and tangle their way across the walkway, a row of tomatoes lines the Southern edge of the fence, and pots of happy sunflower stalks greet them as they walk through the doorway. 

Inside is just a woodburning stove, some hastily carved countertops topped with neat stacks of old books, a wobbly oak table, and a small twin sized bed tucked up into the corner under a windowsill with even more plants. Aradell lights a candle as he walks in and parts his curtains. He moves back over to the stove and starts a kettle with a fluidity and familiarity Fel is only used to seeing in Aradell when he casts his spells. 

Fel plops himself onto Aradells bed propping his feet up on his pillows, shoes and all, “This place is weird.”

“Again, you’ve been here before.” Aradell sighs as he lights the stove and takes a seat at the table facing his bed. 

“I know, I just never really paid attention before. And I don’t mean the mindscape, I mean your house it just feels weird compared to everything else, almost realer and it sure as shit looks better than anything else you’ve built here.” Fel’s eyes skim over the room he’s in in further detail. Observing the plants next to him on the bed, the shelves lined with jars of spellcasting components, the chest sitting on the ground behind the door. His curiosity is piqued but he decides not to do anything about it for now. 

“That’s probably because I didn't build it, I just patched up some holes. It was just sitting here when i left Den Crosswell and it probably feels weird because i remember it better than the random ass forests surrounding this place.”

“Wait, this is a memory? You lived here before you met us?”

“Yeah, this is all a memory,”

Fel sits up in the bed and raises an eyebrow at Aradell, “Cyrus?”

“Not him, dumbass. You really think i’d have him in here as a conscious choice?”

“I don’t know how fucked up you are.” He pauses, “You know what? I take that back, You’re pretty fucked up.”

“You would know.”

“Fuck you, i’m a paragon on healthy decisions,”

Aradell chortles, “that’s the best joke i’ve heard all day.” 

“I’ve done a hell of a lot better than you at least.”

“Literally everyone has made better life decisions than me, That’s a low bar.” 

Fel swings his legs over the side of Aradells bed and sits up to face him. “Fuck you dude, at least i’m alive and not trapped forever in my own head doomed to jack off to the sound of myself crying for the rest eternity.”

“In case you forgot asshole, you could just as easily have been in my place if things had been a little different,” 

“But I'm not, because even you chose my life over your own.” Fel shifts forward and rests his elbows on his knees, maintaining direct eye contact with Aradell.

“I would choose anyone’s life over my own. That’s kind of what put me in this situation.”

“Oh boo hoo Aradell hates himself and wants everyone to know. Buck the fuck up asshole! Guess what. We all hate ourselves. You’re not special.”

“I know i’m not special! I’m a piece of shit!”

“There he goes again.”

“Where the fuck did this even come from? I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Okay, like you haven’t been a complete dick to me since i got here.”

“I didn’t-”

“I’m leaving” Fel stands up from Aradell’s bed and stomps his way to the door, slamming it behind him and sending a thick plume of dust up in its wake. Aradell is completely unaffected albeit considerably pissed off. Aradell was just trying to talk to the guy but the smallest things send him on a rampage nowadays. It’s more than a little exhausting, Especially since he’d kind of like someone to talk to that isn't a demon on Satan's payroll bargaining for his life. That and on good days Aradell actually doesn’t mind the guy. He just always has to go and fuck something up. 

Aradell runs a hand through his hair and gets up to distract himself. Fel will wander around in here until he runs out of steam and leaves for another week, Aradell can’t spend all that time going over all the things he said wrong, his hands are already getting shaky from what he’s blamed himself for already. He looks around the room. Anything benign enough he can focus on. His eyes trace along his countertops and stop on a watering can perched just next to pail of water he brought in yesterday. Even though Aradell doesn’t actually need to water the plants, he tries to do it most days anyway. There's something about the banality of the familiar routine that makes him forget just for a second that he’s dead. Calms him down enough to stave off the shakes he developed a long time ago. 

He plucks the watering can from the counter. Still half full; good enough for now. He moves to the windowsill behind his bed and starts with the herb garden, just like he always used to. Parsley, mint, basil, thyme etc. To the right down the windowsill until he gets to his aloe vera where the dirt smeared on his pillow catches his eye. 

Here Fel is, the only live person Aradell has left to talk to or get any information from- or anything for that matter and all he wants to do is fight every damn time he comes here. Aradell has tried over and over to play nice no matter what he says just so he stays a little longer. Just so Aradell can feel a little normal again for just a little longer, but he always fucks it up. He’s never done anything right. Maybe it’s not Fel’s problem, maybe it’s Aradell. Maybe it’s just another part of his curse. You make friends but all you can ever do is piss them off. He’s so tired of this, so tired of living this way, feeling this way, being the source of all the problems in the world all the time. He can’t keep doing this.

His vision begins to blur. He feels the watering can slip from his hand. He hears it clatter onto the floor. Everything is in slow motion but he’s still powerless to stop anything. Failure is inevitable. He’s powerless. All he can do is wait. Aradell sinks to the floor and presses his back against the wall behind him. He presses his palms against his eyes until he sees static. He feels the wet mess from his watering can soak into his clothes. He is the root of all evil. He tries his hardest to delete himself from existence, to cure the world of the awful plague he unleashed upon them, to undo all the suffering he brought upon anyone who ever met him. but he fails at that too. 

For the first time in a long time, Aradell lets himself cry. 

👻 👻 👻

The taste of a martini begins to foul when you’ve had eight and despite how much alcohol is in your system your body is still incapable of containing any physical substance in its current form. We’ve all been there. Too bad they’re the only drink classy enough to woo Cyrus’ houseguests.

If he were completely alone he might have toyed with the idea of conjuring a cask of ale, good ale, craft ale. Fuck, he misses craft ale, but Aradell or Fel could come waltzing through here any minute. He has to maintain appearances. Everybody knows that horny, sexy demons only drink martinis, and Cyrus has a reputation to uphold. He’s already committed the past three hours of his life to the aesthetic he might as well keep it up. 

He stares at page thirty six of “Wizard You Out!” magazine with glossy eyes. He’s flipped through this edition somewhere around thirty-eight times. At this point he should probably have over half the damn thing memorized. He remembered how shocked he was the first time around to read that Della and Sanford Blacke were getting divorced, and how lackluster the news seems to him now. He ponders how important the magazine reading is to his front for a moment before he realizes without it he’d have to occupy himself with something else. What else is more douchey and unattainable than a martini and a gossip magazine right? And it’s not like Cyrus doesn’t actually like this stuff. He's not faking anything he just wants Aradell to see. The more lavish and douchey his antics are, the more it compels Aradell to make fun of him and the more he gets to talk to him. Even if it is just being told that he’s an asshole over and over. Hell, it beats what he’d get at home. 

Cyrus lets his head fall back onto his lounger with a groan as a breathy, much needed “fuck,” tumbles free from his lips. He allows a moment of respite to wash over him and his arms fall limp at his sides. His magazine goes tumbling to the ground. Cyrus stretches his arms above his head and turns on his side to snatch “Wizard You Out!” from the grass. His fingers graze the spine of the magazine but it’s too far away. “God-Fuck, why? Why can’t a single thing just go right for once?” He leans back once again. Taking a cursory glance around the clearing. Before his eyes fall shut. 

First Fel shows up and now this. He was supposed to be sleeping. 

He’d waited here on his stupid lounge chair for Aradell to come down for hours. Hours he wasted only to be berated with arguments and idiocy as soon as Aradell came down. Of course a good portion of the arguing was his fault but the idiocy primarily fell on Fel himself. Cyrus has begun to feel as though he’ll never get the chance to talk to Aradell without getting cockblocked by that godforsaken tiefling. Not cockblocked in that sense of course he just means getting interrupted. Nothing weird.

Maybe today if he could have talked to Aradell for just a bit longer he might’ve been able to steer it back on track and, well, become friends Cyrus supposes. He’s wanted to talk to Aradell since he first became his guardian. Aradell has always had so much love to give. So much of himself to give for the people around him. He spent the majority of his life suffering in hiding and he might’ve done so for eternity just to protect people he’d never even met. Everywhere that Cyrus succumbs to his baser instincts Aradell is fighting tooth and nail to protect people from his own at the expense of his soul. Cyrus is completely enthralled by him.

The day that Aradell first became a permanent resident of the mindscape was a happy day for Cyrus. Even though it was technically a massive failure for Cyrus given his one task was to keep Aradell alive, he was happy. He still thinks a lot about how selfish that happiness is. Even now when he sees Aradell walking around he’s glad that he’s here. He’s grateful to have someone. Even if that someone is an idiot asshole. If he’s evil for being glad that Aradell is here it’s just par for the course right. I mean he’s a demon, just being alive makes him one of the most despicable things on the planet. Doesn’t make him hate himself any less. 

He watched Aradell for so long. Longing to get closer. Wishing he could know Cyrus. Wishing that maybe Haldanna might let it slip if he talked to him for just a second but he was always too scared to make the move. Always too scared to do anything. Just like always. 

Cyrus never minded Fel at first. If Fel and the rest of them never met Aradell, Cyrus never would have had an opportunity to talk to him. Another thing he never should have been grateful for; Aradell getting gurgled. A lot of good that did him in the long run. 

As time went by though Cyrus saw the effect that Fel had on Aradell. Aradell always looks so happy when Fel shows up. Not outwardly of course, he’s got appearances to keep up with too, but Cyrus could always see it in his eyes. Always so excited to see a familiar face he doesn’t associate with the devil. But it’s the same routine every time. Fel comes, Cyrus is left alone or told to fuck off, they wander away for a while and find their way back in a fouler mood than when they left. Even after Fel leaves Aradell ends up being moody for days afterward. There’s nothing Cyrus can do about it. He shouldn’t care anyway. 

He’s doing his job. Anything Aradell and Fel do in their personal lives is of no consequence. So why does he want to include himself so badly? 

Cyrus stretches his legs out on his chair and moves his arms back to rest his head on them. Without Aradell in close proximity the glade is still. Not a bug or leaf stirs in his absence. Cyrus has always hated the stillness. He knows it would drive Aradell nuts if he knew that the mindscape essentially pressed pause when he wasn’t around. It's almost like his mind has a mind of its own. 

Cyrus has thought countless times about the things he could find in here if he went digging. He wouldn’t though. He has more respect for Aradell’s boundaries than most think he does.

Cyrus is just beginning to drift off when he hears a noise in the distance. A deep snap resounds through the forest like the cracking of a tree followed by the telltale whooshing of something rushing through the leaves. 

“I already told you Aradell knocking over the trees doesn’t do anything but piss me off. They come back in a couple hours.” Cyrus calls over his shoulder. 

He gets no response.

“What the hell is going on!?” Cyrus turns around. Before him the forest is still as it ever was, but something is wrong. A chill creeps down his spine. What the hell did they do? “Aradell? Fel? Where’d you two go!?” Cyrus takes a tentative step forward, his hoof crunching the dry grass underneath the only sound in the glade. Then the wind picks up again. 

The breeze comes at such a force that Cyrus has to take a step back and nearly falls right back onto his chair again. It rushes through the trees like a wave from unnatural stillness to a rampaging whirlwind. 

Cyrus plucks his shades from his face and lets them be swept away in the storm. “Aradell!” He screams just barely making a sound over the rushing wind. Between the trees he sees a darkness creeping in. A wave of Greyscale turning the shade of the trees in his direction and approaching fast. 

Cyrus knows darkness better than he knows himself. It’s never anything good but if there's one thing he learned not to be afraid of that would be it. Still, fear finds a foothold. If this got to Aradell, Cyrus doesn’t want to consider the possibilities. 

The dark consumption sweeps forward bisecting the forest in its path and driving forward in Cyrus’ direction, picking up speed as it goes. Cyrus steels himself and steps forward his hoof rumpling the pages of his discarded magazine as he does. 

The corruption stops a breath away from him. The wind dissipates along with it. In a matter of seconds it will pick up again just as it did before and Cyrus will be taken with it. There is no escape. Just as there was likely no escape for Aradell. 

Cyrus takes a breath and steps into the dark.


End file.
